The present invention relates generally to systems and methods for electronic communication. More specifically, the present invention relates to systems and methods for managing communications between computer systems involved in a transaction. Recent advances in computing and networking technology have enabled a variety of new types of commercial transactions between physically remote parties. For example, many vendors operate Internet web sites at which consumers can purchase the vendor's goods using a credit card or other form of payment. The goods are shipped to the consumer typically after the payment is received. One class of transactions that is growing in importance involves the sale of digital goods, such as digitally-recorded songs, movies, images, books, reports, and the like. The nature of digital goods allows them to be transported over a computer network with relative ease, and/or stored on readily-available and inexpensive storage media, such as diskettes, compact discs (CDs), and the like. Therefore, transactions involving digital goods are able to occur virtually instantaneously, as digital goods can be transmitted over the network from the vendor's computer system to the purchaser's computer system in little time.
In other types of transactions, a copy of a digital work might already reside on the consumer's computer system at the time the consumer wishes to purchase it. For example, the consumer may have obtained a copy from a friend, downloaded a copy from the Internet, or obtained a copy by some other means. The content may be encrypted or otherwise packaged so that it cannot be accessed without payment, and the consumer may thus need to contact the content owner or the owner's agent in order to gain access. For example, the consumer may provide the content owner with a credit card payment in exchange for a cryptographic key or other means of unpacking the content.
There is also an increasing demand for even more flexible business arrangements. For example, a content vendor may wish to allow consumers to purchase content on a pay-per-use basis, and/or may wish to allow consumers to pay for content in a non-traditional manner—such as by allowing the vendor to collect information regarding the consumer's content-usage habits. To facilitate arrangements such as these, a content vendor may provide the consumer with a special rights-management application program that runs on the consumer's computer system and enforces the terms of the consumer's contract with the vendor.
A problem that arises in distributed electronic transactions such as those described above is that of managing the risk borne by content creators and distributors when their content is used by, or distributed to, consumers. For example, content owners will typically wish to prevent consumers from stealing their content and distributing it to others, and will also wish to prevent consumers from circumventing the technical mechanisms by which transactions are conducted and enforced. However, it is desirable to manage this risk in a manner that does not unduly compromise the consumer's content-usage experience, as the more difficult it is for a consumer to access and use electronic content, the less likely it is that the consumer will use it, and thus anti-piracy measures intended to prevent a loss of revenue to the content provider can have the opposite effect. Systems and methods are thus needed for enabling content providers to manage risk flexibly and efficiently, in a manner that accounts for and reduces the impact that risk management decisions have on the end user's experience, and thus on the overall desirability and distribution of the content.